Dominion Virginia Power wins up to $47 million for wind project

Dominion Virginia Power will get up to another $47 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to help build wind turbines off Virginia Beach, the department announced Wednesday.

The demonstration project is one of three the DOE is funding as it looks for ways to cut the cost of offshore wind projects. Dominion will use the money to help build turbines about 24 miles off the coast.

This is the second big federal grant award for the project, dubbed the Virginia Offshore Wind Technology Advancement Project, or VOWTAP. The program won a $4 million grant in late 2012.

"This was a highly competitive process and we thank DOE for recognizing this demonstration project is using innovative designs that will both lower the cost and lower the risk of future commercial scale offshore wind projects located in hurricane prone regions," Mary C. Doswell, a senior vice president-Retail and Alternative Energy Solutions at Dominion, said in a news release announcing the new grant.

It's not clear how much private investment is involved, or what the project's total budget will be. A Dominion spokesman declined to say Wedensday, saying the company isn't releasing that information.

The federal money was welcomed by Virginia political leaders from both parties. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, said in Dominion's release that he's "especially excited" that the project will involve local partners. It's an opportunity to make Virginia "a real leader in offshore wind and create high-skill jobs in the Commonwealth," Warner said.

U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, R-2nd District, said he has "consistently advocated for more research about ways to efficiently harness wind energy," that the technology will mean more jobs for Hampton Roads and that this project represents "another step towards greater energy security for our nation."

Gov. Terry McAuliffe put out his own release.

"This is great news for Virginia and a key step toward my goal of making Virginia the economic hub for research, development and construction of wind turbines off of our coast and at other offshore sites around the nation," McAuliffe said in the release. "The demonstration project alone will have an economic impact of approximately $10 million a year and create up to 100 jobs through the end of construction."

The project still needs approval from the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, but Dominion said it hopes to have two 6-megawatt turbines turbines generating electricity by 2017. They should generate enough energy to run 3,000 homes, the company said, and Dominion plans to run this project adjacent to a swath of ocean it's leasing from the federal government for an eventual large-scale wind energy project.

VOWTAP is a partnership between Dominion and a number of other groups, including Newport News Shipbuilding, the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Alstom Power Inc., which will supply turbines, KBR, an engineering and construction firm, Keystone Engineering, the substructure designer, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is a federally funded research and development center, and the Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute.